Unless otherwise specified, the descriptions of sources in this section are extracted from Pierre-Etienne Will and collaborators,Official Handbooks and Anthologies of Imperial China: A Descriptive and Critical Bibliography (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).

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Description

documentType

Book

Title

Da Ming lüli fujie 大明律例附解[Statute Laws of the Great Ming with Explanations]

Short title

B3792800-00

Topic

1. Code and commentaries

Historical period

Early Ming (1368 -1584)

Country

Chinese

Publication type

Woodblock

Comment

The main part of the work consists of the Ming Code with commentaries and additional materials; it is preceded by a mulu in the form of a complete list of statutes, and by the usual tables an diagrams on the five punishments, degrees of mourning, eight characters, and so forth. The text of the statutes is followed with quotations from commentaries borrowed from several sources (introduced by 講解曰, 直引曰, 辨疑曰, etc., or simply an 按) and extracts from various works, such as the Huidian 會典, Da Ming ling 大明令, and the substatutes in the Wenxing tiaoli 問刑條例 and Chongxiu tiaoli 重修條例. The 12 chapters are followed by various appendixes: (1) nine pages on the use of statutes by analogy (bifu lütiao 比附律條), enumerating a number of crimes and misdemeanor which must be punished “as if it were according to…” (biyi 比依). (2) (in the copy at Ōki) the joint memorial of presentation of the new substatutes by Gu Yingxiang and others. (3) A relatively long (28 or 31 pages depending on the ed.) “Appendix” (fulu) containing a variety of materials useful to the judiciary profession, such as a poem of 14 pentasyllabic lines entitled Jinke yi cheng fu 金科一誠賦, followed by an explanation line by line; a text entitled “A discussion of essentials on models for government” (Weizheng guimo jieyao lun 為政規模節要論), discussing various points of law; a set of extremely precise instructions on the material presentation of memorials (Xieben geshi 寫本格式); a table of officially sanctioned market prices converted in paper-money for a large array of products and goods (Xin zouzhun shigu zhechao zeli 新奏准時估折鈔則例); a complement to a guide on judging cases entitled Duanyu zhinan buyi 斷獄指南補遺, which includes a large quantity of terminology, model phraseology, advice on the composition of judgments, explanations on the degrees of mourning, and much more; it ends with a rhymed poem in 40 heptasyllabic verse on the Penal Code (not in the Chiyang copy). (For comparable materials see also Xingming qimeng xinmiao zongji.)
The incomplete copy at Ōki is only fragments of the larger work bound haphazardly into one sole fascicle. It features: (1) The bifu lütiao 比附律條; (2) The first 14 pages of j. 3 (hulü 戶律); (3) The last page (9a) of j. [12], on “Public works” (gonglü 工律); (4) The last three pages (26-28) of j. 2, on “Officials” (lilü 吏律); (5) The “Appendix” (fulu). Comparison shows that these fragments are from the same engraving as the copies at Hōsa Bunko and Tōyō Bunko, i.e. with ten columns per page instead of nine in the copy at Ōki, hence the differences in page-numbering.